Her Royal Highness Seems to be Angry

Although there was an excessive bend, Leticiel was able to safely step into Nicole's village.

"Nothing..."

"No, I'm just with you, and please don't hesitate"

I'm going to get stuck wondering where the Duke's Lady says she's taking me, but Leticiel is very serious.

Neither the village chief nor the villagers on the road were de-alerting the Feria Legis family lady who had suddenly visited them, but, thanks to one of the earlier evictions of the vigilante, the cursing noise had subsided and the hostility had obviously ceased to be quenched.

The situation in the village was more tragic than I read in the newspaper that reported on the rebellion.

On the side of the road are people wearing dirty clothes and nodding around, people looking for food or fishing for empty bamboo baskets, people desperately trying to plow fields that are cracked and weed-free.

The very sight that spreads in front of me overlapped the view I was seeing a thousand years ago.

Back then, say royalty. All luxury was unacceptably poor, and there was no choice but to have a village like this in the city well.

But Leticiel felt pain and remorse from the bottom of his heart for this tragedy, which was born no longer caused by war, in today's world, which he thought had become peaceful and rich.

Besides, it was the village next door where the riots broke out. If you are so damaged by the aftermath of the uprising, what the hell is going on in the neighbouring village?

"Here we are... here we are"

What has guided me was a flash house built close to the centre of the village. Nicole put her hand on her chest as she looked at the old door of her parents' home, which she would be home for a long time, and when she took a deep breath, she pushed the door open.

Upon entering the house, Nicole rushed first to the bed in the back room. There was a woman with the same color of hair as Nicole resting quietly.

"Don't worry, Nicole, the monk came to treat you at lunch. The container is calm. Let's get up soon. Stay with me."

"... good"

When the village chief comforted him, Nicole moistened her eyes crying and softly shook her sleeping mother's hand laughing like a ho, but let her gaze through the room as she remembered.

"Hey, speaking of which, where's your uncle?

"... oh, he'd be out making money now"

"It is. I wonder how my uncle is doing."

The village chief was trying to say that for some reason, but Nicole hadn't noticed.

"Nicole, does your mother get sick often?

Asking so, Nicole lays her eyes down like a little cut.

"Yep... my mother is weak and she always breaks down in the fall and winter because of the harsh climate here. In addition, the village is in this state now... and I think it's prolonged due to overlapping hard work..."

"Yes..."

If I can treat you with magic, I want to cure you, but unlike wounds, I can't treat the disease unless I know exactly what caused it.

Even as he guided Nicole's mother, Leticiel simply did not want to keep an eye on the parent and child in front of her.

"Mr. Village Chief, I'd like to ask you a few questions, would you mind?

"... yes, of course"

Leticiel speaks to the village chief while Nicole leaves the room to prepare water and cloth towels.

I wanted to hear why the village was in such a state and what had devastated the village so far.

Nicole, I'm gonna take your seat off a little bit.

"... Lady, which way are you going?

Nicole, who is back, has asked Leticiel that about to leave the room.

"Yeah, I need to talk to the village chief for a second. I'll be outside. Call me if anything happens."

When Leticiel says so, Nicole nods, saying she understands.

After Nicole and her mother's house, the village chief asked questions as she entered the barn next to the house.

"What do you want to ask Non...?

"Don't get so comfortable. I just want to ask you the truth about what happened here."

Leticiel stares at the streets of the village as he says so. A dry breeze is blowing, soaking up the debris and dust falling on the road, and dropping it from the sky again.

"I hear this is a village that mainly produces dyes and cloth textiles. The dye shouldn't be very affected by famine, so why are you in such a state...?

……

The village chief nagged for a while and shut up, but eventually began to whisper his potpout without raising his face.

"It's not the village of Non La... it's the village next door. Since the long-defunct village around the Marne region came under the direct authority of the Duke's family, orders have been issued frequently to provide labour to nearby villages. So the villages of Non and all the men were taken to the neighbouring villages..."

Hearing that, Leticiel realized why he hardly saw a man in this village.

Think of it, the villager men that Leticiel saw earlier at the entrance to the village were unnaturally few given the size of the village. There was no such thing as a young and benign man among those on the road, and it seemed to me that the story of the village chief was telling the truth.

"So you've lost someone who can make money or do farming..."

"Yes, Master Left...... More than ever... Non and others managed to squeeze their wits together to get through it, but all that remained was women and children to the powerless sick, injured, and old..."

"Do you know why we need manpower in the neighbouring village?

When Leticiel asks so, the village chief shakes his neck to the side like a jerk.

"Has it been a few months... it's like Fried is producing something on a massive scale while managing it straight away. It seems to be rushing to develop the land or keeping the processing plants running day and night without rest..."

"Production......? Do you know what you're making?

"Hmmm......"

Returning to that inquiry was the village chief's sighing little roar.

"I don't know about that... I think they're giving me a warrant to punish my family in unison if I talk out of it... I don't even ask them deeply... The only thing we know is that what it is made of is being transported out of the territory somewhere without being returned to the people..."

So the village chief cuts his words once and looks out the window as he strokes his beard.

"Besides, some of them came back, but things were not right for everyone... He suddenly yells and scatters, he talks with his vain eyes towards nothing, he starts to act self-inflicted, and he storms like people have changed anyway..."

Hearing that, Leticiel thinks arm in arm. There are several possible reasons for such symptoms, but what the hell is causing them? Plague, magic action, or...

"When Master Phantom was the consul deputy, the eagles were able to live in the crowd too... The Duke only returns to the extent that he counts each year, and this whole area could have been messed up since Lord Fried was pro-government..."

Nostalgic, but somewhere with sad eyes, the village chief looked up at the ceiling.

"Dear Phantom..."

"Yes, we managed to keep our lives together because you put personal belongings on for the people of Nong La, and you took into account the tax payment due date..."

Listening to the village chief, a figure named Phantom seems to be a nobleman with the kind of benevolence to distribute food from the Duke's warehouse to a dysfunctional and starving people or to hire him in a mansion to provide a place to work to a people who have lost their jobs.

They were calling on villages in the territory to promote potato cultivation or to develop new industries using wood in an effort to break the people's plight.

"I also come to Shirai frequently to visit… always face the people sincerely and in person"

"Really? Master Phantom is a wonderful man."

"Yes, the villages of Nona and all the other villages and townspeople were saved thanks to Phantom."

Leticiel was interested in a man named Phantom, who said that some of the Duke's rulers were well-informed and trusted by the people.

Then he asks a little more about the living conditions of the inhabitants, and politely thanks the village chief, and Leticiel tells Nicole to come out for a little while, and leaves the house.

"Well..."

Leticiel, who left on the main street, heads straight to the warehouse on the outskirts of the village. It's a warehouse that's been out of use for years, and Leticiel told the village chief earlier to rent it.

When I opened the old door to the wood, the bough dust broke out.

There are several columns standing inside the dim warehouse that support the roof, one of which is tied to a vigilante man. Around scratched and falling, the villagers probably made me bump.

When Leticiel approached Tsukatsuka and the man, he created a mass of water in his palm, rupturing it over the man's head. Tons of water pour down on the man, and he wakes up coughing up.

"Tell me everything you know. Whose instructions are you working on, what the hell were you doing here"

"... Hino! Speak! Don't kill me because I speak!!

The man screams pitifully in the face of a cold, faceless woman who slapped herself, opening her eyes and jumping first.

"Then I ask you, you're not a guard under the direct authority of the Duke's house, are you? The crest on the back of his hand doesn't belong to the Duke's house."

When transporting the man, Leticiel was looking at the crest of a serpent tangled in a long sword engraved in the back of the man's hand. There's no way I'll forget. It is the same crest as the men who attacked Barry.

"Oh yeah......! We are in a mercenary regiment called Black Steel, the Knights of..."

"You're a mercenary... Who's your employer?

"It's the Duke's son, Fr. Fried!

"... yes. If you're hired by Fried, you know that, right? What are you guys doing in this whole village? The small number of men in this village, and this riot, is it possible that you are not the culprits?

With that said, Leticiel activates the magic of icing.

The dirt at Leticiel's feet is covered in cloudy white ice, which intertwines on a man's feet like a snake making noise with a painkiller.

Of course, not willing to ice marinate it, but the effect was immense, and the man blued his face sassy, and spoke perky as if the river had broken down.

The man was a small executive headed by a mercenary regiment called the Knights of Black Steel, and Fried and the Knights seemed to have a cooperative relationship at an organizational guru.

"Sake! We make and carry distilled liquor in that village at the behest of Lord Fried!

"... distilled liquor? Though I don't think there's enough food in the Duke's territory to make liquor now, even though the rations to the people are unsatisfactory?

"Oh, we're just following instructions! Because it is Master Fried who is flushing the goods in the back route...... Yes, I heard the captain and Master Fried talking once, but he said something about support supplies."

The famine in the Duke's territory had been going on for several years. It is not surprising that food support is provided by the State. Is Fried using it to fatten his personal appetite until his support supplies?

"And then there's lead in alcohol... or something I don't really know, and I said that sweet and delicious wines can be made that way, and the nobles of Wangdu will buy them all..."

Leticiel knew what the man was talking about.

Even a thousand years before Leticiel's life, lead was treasured as a sweet seasoning, but it was banned in the Kingdom of Regenerase, Leticiel's homeland, as eroding the human body and decreasing the efficiency of sorcery operations.

"What else is Fried doing? Tell me what you know. That shouldn't be all, should it?

Forced to swallow the rising anger into his chest, Leticiel asks.

Freed, Leticiel had noticed that this was not the only evil thing about the Knights of Black Steel.

Leticiel hasn't missed hearing one villager yell "sold his daughter" when he was cursed when entering this village. Besides, I don't think the state of the villagers that the village chief said they were involved either.

"Besides that, take the women and children you've taken to other countries... this is because you're getting acquiescence from Master Freed too...!

"... yes. So? And then what? Isn't it your fault that all the villagers back from the neighboring village went crazy?

The man tries to back off with a shivering pitiful voice at Leticiel, who is putting every black flame up behind him.

Leticiel did not put it on his face, but his intestines were boiling back inside, to their deeds, which only seemed to think of the people as a disposable tool.

"Oh, that's... I don't know! He asked me to make some good money, and me, I just came over here recently. What... it's true! And believe me...! Yes, I told you. I told you! So don't kill me!

A man gushes his face and begs, but Leticiel, who thought he was going to stick him out later to uncover the Duke's guilt, is less willing to kill him than he was originally.

When Leticiel uses electric magic to lose consciousness of a man, he ties up the fainted man with a rope again, putting his hand on the ground and activating the magic. The surrounding soil deformed grudgingly, surrounding the man, forming the shape of the box as it was.

Leticiel hardens the soil, makes it, puts the man in the impromptu chamber, and leaves the warehouse behind.

The western sky is already stained red. It was a burning crimson sky, as if it had captured the inside of Leticiel's chest.